Does the rate of violent victimization differ across race
and ethnic groups? In an effort to answer this question, this study
sought to examine the violent victimization rate and the factors
influencing ethnic-specific rates of violence in the city of
Miami. Administrative data were obtained from the United States Bureau
of the Census and the Miami Police Department Research Unit. For the
groups of people identified as Afro Americans, Latinos, and Haitians,
the numbers who were victims of aggravated assault and robbery in 1997
are inclu... (more info)

Does the rate of violent victimization differ across race
and ethnic groups? In an effort to answer this question, this study
sought to examine the violent victimization rate and the factors
influencing ethnic-specific rates of violence in the city of
Miami. Administrative data were obtained from the United States Bureau
of the Census and the Miami Police Department Research Unit. For the
groups of people identified as Afro Americans, Latinos, and Haitians,
the numbers who were victims of aggravated assault and robbery in 1997
are included along with the assault and robbery rates for each
group. The remaining variables are the percent of female-headed
households, percent below poverty line, percent of young males out of
the labor force and unemployed, residential instability, vacant and
household instability, and the percent of 1980-1990 immigrants.

Access Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public.
Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

The user guide and codebook are provided by ICPSR as
Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The PDF file format was
developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF
reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how
to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web
site.

Methodology

Study Purpose:
Does the rate of violent victimization differ
across race and ethnic groups? Researchers of urban social problems
continue to struggle with this question. The racial and ethnic
composition of urban America has changed as a result in large part of
increased immigration over the past 20 years, requiring researchers to
acknowledge the growth of Latino, Asian, and Afro-Caribbean
neighborhoods--many of which are in high crime and high poverty
areas. Despite the growth of studies on race and violence over the
past two decades that have examined this linkage at the national,
metropolitan, and city levels, this issue remains largely overlooked
at the neighborhood level. Many studies of Black or White violence are
no longer reflections of the nature of racial and ethnic population
compositions in many urban communities. The contextual factors that
shape neighborhood-level violence have become important to identify
since these influences might vary when accounting for racial and
ethnic differences in violent crime, even within a single city. This
study examined the violent victimization rate and the factors
influencing ethnic-specific rates of violence for armed robbery and
aggravated assault in the city of Miami. The objective was to better
inform analyses of violent crime by outlining the basic contours of
race/ethnicity (Latino, African American,and Haitian) in a primarily
immigrant city by focusing on serious reported non-lethal violence.

Study Design:
The primary unit of observation for this study was
the census tract, or more specifically, the 70 census tracts in the
city of Miami that are comprised of 500 or more residents. Census
tracts were used as neighborhood proxies because research has shown
they are the best unit of analysis below the city level to study the
race and violence connection. The minimum population requirement was
imposed to help stabilize rates of violence crime and avoid the
inclusion of small islands in Biscayne Bay with few residents or
containing upscale high-rise hotels or condominiums. Administrative
records data were obtained from the United States Bureau of the Census,
which provided the 1990 census tract data. These data provide detailed
demographic information such as the number of residents, the
percentage of tract population living below the poverty level, racial
and ethnic composition, and a host of other information. The data for
all reported robberies and aggravated assaults for 1997 was obtained
from the city of Miami Police Department Research Unit. The address
for each incident and victim race, surname, age, and gender were
provided in a raw data file, geocoded into the census tract in which
they occurred, aggregated to the tract level, and merged with the
census tract information.

Sample:
The city of Miami was purposively chosen as the city most
suited for this study. Researchers chose Miami because it provided an
excellent opportunity to examine the race/ethnicity and violence
linkage in a high violence city with a racially and ethnically diverse
population and a large immigrant population.

Data Source:

Data were collected from the United States Bureau of
Census and the Miami Police Department Research Unit.

Description of Variables:
For the groups of people identified as Afro
Americans, Latinos, and Haitians, the number who were victims of
aggravated assault and robbery in 1997 are included along with the
assault and robbery rates for each group. The remaining variables are
the percent of female-headed households, percent below poverty line,
percent of young males out of the labor force and unemployed,
residential instability, vacant and household instability, and the
percent of 1980-1990 immigrants.

Response Rates:
Not applicable.

Presence of Common Scales:
None.

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:2004-02-27

Version History:

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.